Abstract: The Old Man and the Sea, a perfect work by Earnest Hemingway in his old age, has gained a new life and everlasting charm through retranslations ever since it was first translated and introduced into China in the 1950s. Regarding translation as a social act constrained by norms, the present paper studies the translation of The Old Man and the Sea against its social, political and historical settings, and describes the translation and introduction process of more than six decades through an in-depth probe into various extra-textual motivating factors. The scope of the research is narrowed from the total 302 Chinese versions of The Old Man and the Sea down to 178 complete translations. And the major findings of the research are as follows. From the perspective of the form of translation and introduction, it can be said that The Old Man and the Sea has been read in China both as a classic and a piece of children’s literature, with the latter being more prominent. From the perspective of the period of translation and introduction, it is found that the process from the initial slow development in translation and introduction to two climaxes of retranslation reveals the rivalry between ideology and literary consciousness, while the journey from a “silent period” to a “summit” in the retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea unveils the competition between literary consciousness and economic motivation. In a word, the retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea has always been manipulated in the multi-causality system consisting of ideology, literary consciousness and economic motivation of both the patron and the translator.

Keywords: The Old Man and the Sea; translation and introduction; retranslation

摘要： 被誉为海明威晚年完美之作的《老人与海》，自20世纪50年代首次译介到中国以来，在不断重译的道路上获得重生，散发出历久弥新的魅力。本文将翻译视为规范制约下的一种社会行为，将这部作品译介的话题置于社会、政治、历史的大背景中加以审视，通过深入探究促使译介行为发生的种种文本外部因素，描绘这部作品在中国60多年的译介历程。在具体的文本研究中，采取由全景考察到核心聚焦的方法，由全部302种中文版本的全景聚焦到178种全译本上。从译介形态来看，《老人与海》是同时以经典文学和儿童文学两种形态在中国译介的，且后者表现出更强的趋势。从译介时期来看，从译介初期的缓慢发展期到两次重译高潮的到来，是文学意识影响力逐步增强的结果，而重译经高潮到沉寂，又攀至高峰的过程，则主要是文学意识与经济意识两种力量之间的角逐。重译发展的历程是在包括赞助人与译者所处的时代、文学意识和经济意识在内的多种因素共同起作用的结果。

关键词: 《老人与海》, 译介, 重译